From 2006 to 2009, British popular music flourished in America, prompting some in the British and American media to declare this as the “third” British Invasion. In order to evaluate this assertion, this latest cycle of success was compared to the two previous British popular music invasions of the 1960s and 1980s. As there has been little scholarship devoted to understanding this more recent period, the purpose of this study was to establish how significant this latest era of British popular music success has been and in what ways its characteristics are similar to or different from the two previous British Invasions. This was partly achieved by comparing the more recent cycle of success with previous cycles through examination of both pri